NEW DELHI, JUNE 28: The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has strongly reacted to the UNAIDS Global Report on HIV/AIDS Epidemic 2000, which reports that 3.1 lakh people died of AIDS in India in 1999. Not only do these deaths far exceed the official "reported death figure" of 11,000, but are three times the expected projections by the World Health Organisation."There is no basis for these projections and the UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva could not explain how they reached these estimates," says J V R Prasada Rao, Director, National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO). "We have asked them to correct their mistake and they have agreed," he adds.Asked how the estimates were reached, Gordon Alexander, Senior Country Programme Advisor (India), UNAIDS, explained: "These are demographic projections based on our knowledge of how long it takes for HIV to spread in a given population."Most people working with people living with HIV dismiss NACO's death count. "Many AIDS-related deaths go unreported as we don't even know how many of the lakhs dying of tuberculosis actually have AIDS," says Rajesh Jha, Programme Manager, Naz Foundation.The UNAIDS report estimates that 7 in 1,000 adults between ages of 19 and 44 are infected with HIV in India. Over 3.7 million people live with HIV/AIDS in the country, of which 0.2 million are children. India's epidemic is highly diverse, with some states showing no HIV infection and others recording an adult HIV prevalence rate of 2 per cent and above.India, by the sheer strength of its population, has the second largest HIV positive population in the world, after South Africa. Even a rise of just 0.1 prevalence among Indian adults, for example, can push up the number of HIV-infected adults by over half a million people.The numbers, says Gordon, are anyway a small part of the report. "The report looks beyond health and assesses the socio-economic impact of the epidemic and successful intervention programmes," he says. It reports that the Indian government's aggressive safe-sex campaign in Tamil Nadu has become so popular with men that it has resulted in reduced casual sexual encounters. The use of condoms, too, has risen "dramatically" in the State.Commending the Government and individual state governments effort, the report says that "if current prevention efforts can be scaled up and sustained, India may be able to bring down the rates of HIV infection in particularly exposed groups and avert a widespread heterosexual epidemic".But while the report quotes data from positive trends in AIDS control in Tamil Nadu, it does not dwell upon states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where work in HIV prevention is just beginning.Sex workers, migrant workers, truckers and injectable drug users remain at high risk. By the mid-'90s, over 25 per cent sex workers in cities like Delhi, Hyderabad, Madurai, Pune, Tirupati and Vellore tested positive for HIV. In Mumbai, HIV infection among sex workers was a higher 71 per cent way back in 1997.In Manipur, the prevalence of HIV infection among the mostly male drug users shot up from virtually nothing in 1988 to over 70 per cent just 4 years later, and has remained high ever since. About 2.2 per cent pregnant women in Manipur tested positive for HIV in 1999, most of them getting the disease through heterosexual sex, the report said.
